Menu

Queer Theory

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this blog’s numbering is off. This is because of my anarchist views. I think if we stick to the social norms of categorizing and having as our main goal a legacy for our children that makes sense, we are limiting not only our imaginations, but our children’s potential.

In fact, we should just stop caring about what our children will be faced with. Or our children’s children. Who says that the legacy left us is something we can claim? And what right do our descendants have to claim our accomplishments as their own, or as something they can build on? Let’s live in the now.

At least, this is what I understood from a guy in one of my grad classes who is writing his thesis on Queer Theory. Eff the children. Nobody likes babies anyways.

According to Wikipedia, however, queer theory is a little deeper. (To his credit though, he had only about 30 seconds to explain it to me.)

Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers. It is an identity without an essence. ‘Queer’ then, demarcates not a positivity but a positionality vis-à-vis the normative.

So, it’s a study of stuff that’s not normal. Sounds like an adventurous topic for a master’s thesis. I don’t know where you’d get a job bragging that you wrote your thesis promoting deviant behavior…

But in light of his ability to make an abstract concept interesting enough to me that I checked it out on Wikipedia, Ryan in my Intercultural Communication class hereby receives the Adventurer of the Week award. Or maybe month. Depending on how many interesting people I meet when I go couch surfing next week. More on that later.